March 25, 2009

BSG Predictions Wrap-Up

Now that things have ended, and ended well (set your expectations, people), let’s revisit our predictions and see how we did.

H and Zohar are 0-2 on the true nature of Starbuck. In fairness, I must note:

They were totally spot-on about the nature and origin of the Final Five, an aspect of their elaborate theory that I chose not to discuss in my previous post.

They weren’t actually wrong about Starbuck, per se, it’s just that the show did not actually provide any explanation of the true nature of Starbuck (although the strong implication is that she was an angel/ghost/other paranormal entity).

I was 2-2 on the existence of Daniel and his further insignificance to the plot. (Whether he will come up in Caprica remains to be seen. RDM is fronting like he won’t, but I find that hard to believe. (I’m actually really interested in how the hell the last season of BSG is going to square with Caprica, which seems to be about the invention (or re-invention) of Cylon and resurrection technologies.))

What all of our wrong predictions share in common is the assumption the writer’s would feel obligated to explain some significant number of lingering mysteries (e.g., the head characters, Starbuck’s resurrection, the opera house vision, “All Along the Watchtower”) in the finale. As it turned out, they referenced all of these things, but they didn’t explain any of them. Instead we got: God did it. Any prediction rooted in physical phenomena and empirical explanations was bound to fail.

I think the finale would have been better and more satisfying—even absent any additional explanation—if my resurrection prediction had come true. I was pretty convinced it would through the first hour of the finale, right up to “there’s got to be some kind of way out of here”—especially with Tori and Cavil’s deaths immediately preceding that last fateful jump. When they made the jump, they could have arrived at Earth-Veldt with Galactica and all of the major characters resurrected. Voila. That’s what happened to Starbuck: she jumped to the magical coordinates and she and her ship were resurrected. Maybe they’re all dead and Earth-Veldt is heaven. Maybe their cindered corpses are right next to Starbuck’s on Earth-Prime. Who knows? No need to explain. The rest of the episode can proceed unchanged (with the exception of the fact that you have to deal with Cavil, Boomer, and the rest of the Evil Cylons being Not Dead. Easy: they’ve been converted to goodness and light by this dramatic turn of events (if you can trust the Centaurians, you can trust them, can’t you?). This can be dispensed with in about three lines of dialogue).

Overall, I feel like I didn’t get X-Files’d, parly because the BSG crew did a pretty good job of tamping down expectations (at times with a sledgehammer) and partly because I honestly didn’t care all that much about the mythology. I only wish the last season had had more episodes like “The Oath” and “Blood on the Scales” and fewer like “A Disquiet Follows My Soul” and “No Exit”. Still, a bad episode of BSG was better than… going out on Friday night.

My life now lacks a one-hour drama (except for Mad Men). What’s good on TV?

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3 Comments

Yup.
The reason why we and so many others were wrong about Starbuck is because we looked for rational explanations to her mystery, but RDM never had a real plan in my opinion, and wanted to kill her off, but then did a oops, never mind, and brought her back. Her presence makes no sense, and in fact is the most Super natural event in the whole series. To have a corporeal angel walking, talking,k fighting, having sex, cursing, crying, and killing for an entire season just to have her POOF out in her last scene?

Disgusting bit of cop-out writing. This just destroyed the show to me, and made it as bad as if they had aliens on the show.

I can accept the angel-like head Baltar and Caprica, they at least make sense in the context of “God” but Starbuck as some cheap-ass version of a Jesus is just awful writing, that shows no real direction or allows for the character to exist in a rational world.

So they found a home, and they called it Earth. Why is it that we call it Earth? As if Earth is some magical word. It’s funny that a space capable society would call a mostly water covered planet by the 1/4 of its surface, namely that it has land.

They werent shy about calling that other planet the “Algea Planet”

I’m just pissed, and to me this WAS the X-files redux.

Blegh. The Plan will be at least better because at least it will return us somewhat to the days when BSG was fun, at the start of this adventure.

Her presence makes no sense, and in fact is the most Super natural event in the whole series. To have a corporeal angel walking, talking,k fighting, having sex, cursing, crying, and killing for an entire season just to have her POOF out in her last scene?

I agree. I think the writers had a dramatic arc for her and really didn’t care if it made a lick of sense.

So they found a home, and they called it Earth. Why is it that we call it Earth? As if Earth is some magical word.

Well, why is it that we play “All Along the Watchtower”? God did it.

The Plan will be at least better because at least it will return us somewhat to the days when BSG was fun, at the start of this adventure.

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